Refusing to cede ground to the COVID-19 pandemic, artists get creative on driveways throughout the city as well as online
Sophie Paolino’s eye-popping mermaid display is coming together outside Reed Interiors on East Gutierrez Street. (Brooke Holland / Noozhawk photo)
By Brooke Holland, Noozhawk Staff Writer
The I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival is widely regarded as one of Santa Barbara’s most popular springtime events, drawing tens of thousands of spectators to the plaza in front of the historic Santa Barbara Mission during the Memorial Dayweekend.
The coronavirus pandemic that has been sweeping the globe also swept away any hope of continuing the 34th festival in its traditional format. So organizers got as creative as the street painters chalking up their colorful artwork.
Instead of hosting the festival in one place, they took the festival to neighborhood driveways throughout the city, and then online for everyone to view.
This year’s online festival featured artists painting all over the world, according to event organizers.
I Madonnari is also sharing the artwork on its Instagram and Facebook pages.
Street painters transformed the pavement canvases into elaborate and vibrant masterpieces in their driveways and at local businesses.
Local photographer and artist Sophie Paolino used her fingers to smooth out brown-colored chalk on concrete on Sunday. She worked on an eye-popping mermaid display at Reed Interiors at 590 E. Gutierrez St. in Santa Barbara.
“This (Reed Interiors) is where I work as a kitchen designer and I don’t have a driveway that I could have done this in,” said Paolino, a two-time I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival participant. “It’s been challenging physically to do it because the concrete doesn’t blend as well as the pavement.
“I thought it would be fun to do it where I work because we have a lot of parents who bring their kids with them,” she continued. “It’s fun for kids to see it.”
In the 2500 block of Chapala Street, between West Quinto Street and West Constance Avenue, Russ Carter finished a large painting on Sunday afternoon. The black-and-white display featured a smaller illustration of the coronavirus, shown with a red color.
The coronavirus is falling into the vortex — the piece is called “Death to COVID.”
Santa Barbara resident Meredith Morin, who has been an artist at I Madonnari for about 30 years, worked on her art of a big orangutan baby next to a driveway on Mountain Avenue on the Westside.
“I had done two others before this, and they were both about nurses,” she said. “I wanted to do something that was out of the scope, and something that people would laugh at and enjoy.”
The Memorial Day weekend festival is produced by and is a fundraiser for the Children’s Creative Project, a nonprofit arts education program of the Santa Barbara County Education Office. The organization serves roughly 50,000 students in more than 100 public schools.
Three longtime I Madonnari artists are collaborating to create this year’s featured 12-foot-by-48-foot street painting. The large display is in a gated, private area that is not open to the general public, festival organizers said.
Sharyn Chan, Ann Hefferman and Jay Schwartz, with the assistance of Emily Hefferman, are recreating Thomas Hart Benton’s 1947 allegorical painting, “Achelous and Hercules.”
A benefit of this year’s virtual festival is that artists have enough space to do this piece in its entirety, without editing out any of the original content.
“This is allowing us to work bigger,” said Schwartz, who participated in his first Santa Barbara I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival in 1992. “We all have to adapt to this crazy time and this is one way. It’s also good that the festival is being kept alive.”
As part of the 2020 virtual edition on Saturday, children were provided free chalk to create drawings on their driveways — thanks to the sponsorship of Village Properties Realtors.
The I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival will continue Monday at several locations in Santa Barbara.
Click here for more information about the festival.
